Promoting observation, free range exploration, sense of place and citizen science, through the field notes of a naturalist.

Friday, 1 January 2010

From Russia - or more accurately the former Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic - with love.

It comes to something when you only realise the Black Headed Gull in front of you was carrying a ring when you download your photographs the following evening. However, they were sufficently sharp to make out a few letters and numbers and enough to determine that it wasn't a shiny new BTO ring Christmas present it was showing off. Now thankfully gone are the days when reporting a ringing retrap/recovery involves filling out a card sending it off via snail mail then to wait anxiously greeting the postman at the garden gate every day for six months just for some news. With the information super highway at our finger tips an hour or so searching the net and bingo those handful of letters on the ring were enough to confirm the bird was ringed in Estonia at the Matsalu Bird Ringing Centre in fact which is part of the Matsula National Park. Off course I'm still going to need to fill out details on the BTO website to find out some of the more finer details of the bird such as when it was ringed, how old it was when ringed etc. but at least i've got some information to be going on with.

'My own primary motivation for protecting the environment has nothing to do with economics. It is deeply rooted in the pleasure I derive from contact with the natural world, and the moral conviction that we hold the environment in trust for future generations'. Professor Sir John Lawton CBE FRS (2010)